Why I Prefer Escort Dates to Private Dates

The most honest answer is the least romantic one: I don't have time.

I study. I work. And then there's this. Anyone who asks me when I actually date is asking a question my life has no slot for. Spending three weeks texting between appointments to find out whether an evening is even worth it — that is a hobby for people with time in the bank. I have none.

But that is only the beginning of the answer, and the more boring part.

The men you never meet privately

The men I meet through a booking are men I would never have met privately. Not because they are out of reach. Simply because our paths would never have crossed.

They are not on the apps. And even if they were — someone who runs three companies, or operates, or stands in a kitchen at four in the morning because his place opens at six, is not the person swiping through profiles in the evening. The very quality that makes him interesting is the quality that keeps him out of private dating.

The same is true of me. Neither of us has time. The difference is that we both made an exception and wrote it into a calendar.

I have sat at tables with people I would not have met in any other life. I have learned what a business looks like from the inside when before I only knew its name. I have listened while someone explained a decision affecting hundreds of people, and thought about it for two days afterwards.

That is not part of any offer or any fee. It is still the part I would no longer want to give up.

Conversations I have to keep up with

There is a kind of conversation that is pleasant and in which nothing happens — nice, even, and afterwards you remember nothing. And there is the other kind, the one you keep thinking about on the way home.

That I so often get the second kind has an unromantic reason: someone who sets aside three hours of his time for an evening does not come to talk about the weather.

I read differently since then. I take an interest in things I didn't know existed. Not so I can join in — everyone notices that immediately anyway. But because I find it entertaining to be the least informed person at a table and to walk out no longer being that.

The only interesting man in the lecture hall

And now the part I regularly get odd looks for in private: I want to meet a man I can look up to.

Not because of money. Because of something he can do and I can't. Someone who is genuinely good at what he does and doesn't need to explain it, because you notice after two sentences. Competence is not a side effect for me. It is the point.

I sit in lectures several times a week. When I look around and am completely honest: the only man in the room I find impressive, interesting and — I'll say it as it is — attractive, is standing at the front giving the lecture.

That's a joke. About half of one.

Maybe it just says something about me. That skill attracts me, and not just a little. Or I'm simply too dirty-minded. Both are possible, and I've stopped weighing one against the other.

But I don't think it's really about me. It's about the maths. People at the top of their field are usually busy getting there or staying there. They aren't looking. They don't have the evenings that looking requires.

A booked evening is the only setting in which two people with full calendars reliably end up sitting across from each other. You can find that cold. I find it practical.

How you are treated

There is one part nobody talks about, because it sounds too old-fashioned: these men have manners.

They stand up when I come to the table. They ask what I would like instead of ordering for me. The phone lies face down all evening, and it isn't turned over. They walk me out, even when it's raining, even when it's inconvenient. None of it is spectacular. Together it makes an evening on which I feel exceptionally good.

And then I noticed something I didn't want to believe at first.

In private dating, gallantry is often strategy. You hold the door because you want to achieve something. Once the goal is reached, it stops — every woman knows the moment a man stops making an effort.

On a booked evening that moment doesn't exist. I am already there. Everything has been agreed. A man who still holds my coat then isn't doing it to get something. He does it because that's who he is.

It took me a long time to think this thought through, and I still don't entirely like it. But I believe it's true:

Of all things, the setting everyone considers unromantic is the only one in which I can see how a man behaves when he gains nothing from it.

And yes, that too

I want to be honest at the point where most people stop.

Intelligence and manners are not nice extras for me. They are the trigger. A man who is clever and knows how to behave has an immediate effect on me — and not in theory.

That has a consequence nobody talks about, because everyone assumes it is ruled out: an evening that begins like this is a different evening. Not because anything has been arranged that hasn't been arranged. But because attraction can't be switched off just because it is in a calendar.

And then there is something I didn't want to admit for a long time: I make an effort. Not because it's expected. But because I want him to remember. That in two weeks he thinks of this evening and not of just any evening.

That is vanity. I call it by its name anyway.

A fair deal

What I like most is how unexcited it all is.

Everything is agreed beforehand. How long, for what, in what setting. Nobody claims anything to look better. Nobody hints at something he doesn't intend to keep. There is no message three days later that you have to read three times to understand what it means. There are no false expectations, because the right ones were spoken out loud.

In private dating almost everything is negotiation — only nobody admits that anyone is negotiating. Who gets in touch first. Who commits. Who shows more interest and supposedly loses something by it. I was never good at it, and at some point I stopped wanting to be good at it.

A booking is the opposite. Two adults who say what they want and stick to it. It sounds sober and is in truth the most relaxed thing I know.

What it costs

I won't pretend it has no price.

The setting that makes everything easy is the same setting that limits everything. An evening ends at a time that was fixed in advance. The people I find most interesting stay interesting — and they also stay exactly where they are. No growing into something, no next year together, no story that gets longer.

Sometimes I drive home and think: wow, what a dream man. I would have liked to know him better. That isn't heartache; it's too clear for that. It's more like closing a book that was good and that you're not allowed to keep.

I accept that. Not because I have to, but because I know what I'm trading it for: evenings that don't happen, with men I don't admire, in conversations I forget afterwards.

Put like that, it isn't a hard decision.